By Langston Hughes

As Daisy gets older, and her tumors spread, I am struck with how very limited her time is becoming. Its enough to make me literally weep... the idea of my world without her in it leaves me feeling incomplete. I'm glad Kipling found the words for this. 

 

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years that nature permits
Are closing in asthma or tumors or fits
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers, or loaded guns.
Then you will find--its your own affair
But--you've given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will
When the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You still discover how much you care
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We've sorrow enough in the natural way
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em the more do we grieve;
For when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short time loan is as bad as a long--
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

-- Rudyard Kipling "The Power of the Dog"

 the pot on the stove

with a mix of cinnamon and zest 

could have been a brew

from our witchy past

I smell it still when 

as the days start to fall

the nights gather power 

the wolves sound their call

I recall its spell when 

as my soft roundness scrapes

against edges meant for points 

I long to escape 

we are witches made tame

how I wish to return

to times when we were wild

when we knew, no need to learn

My body is made of soil,
loamy and rich - colorful and fragrant, 

a ground waiting to plant,
in a package of good intentions,

biting my lip when the tears come,
holding back the sobs in the dark, 

push them down and bury them,
fertilized with fears of what they will grow into. 

 

 

 

 

 

August feels like -
             - the beginning of the end
like light starting to slant
days waning, and life slowing


August feels like -
             - nights gathering crisp air
like fires burning
                      down
                              to
                                 embers
heat fading, and night building


August feels like -
             - bags packed and ready to go
like grabbing a sweater as you leave
final chapter starting, a fresh beginning




(I wrote this back in March, in one of the long days of quarantine when it felt like August would never arrive. How much is different, how much is the same.)

two stories of
stone, wood, windows
light filled and cozy
space for private thoughts
and a deck for merging
indoors with outside
kitchen made for baking
smells that will fill the house
Om and Shanti Shanti
           right
               over
                    there
And oh, that damn breadbox too

       Of course.



(4/18/20)

I closed my eyes
         on a mind racing,
but opened them to
          ducks gliding,
ripples followed
          their bodies,
tail feathers twitching
          as they take
their time across
         the pond.

They have no worries
         about the time,
just directions inside
         their feathers,
so they don't know
         - nor care, I suppose,
why I could sit there
        watching all day,
but instead why
         I must go.

Do they notice the grey
         of the prestorm light,
or is that a strictly human
         thing to see?
Later my daughter will ask
         what do ducks eat,
And I'll realize I don't
         have an answer,
but when I open my eyes
         I think only of wishing,


        I
           could
                  glide
                        like
                             that.



(4/18/20)

its hard to know whats next
when the world is on pause

at resuming do we ease back in
or will it all rush out at once

the March that lasted 1000 day
collapsing into November, December, a New Year

all of us shaking our heads
wondering when time stopped meaning anything;

or - -
will we be softer with the emerging?

will we learn to linger over days
seek the still of what was

touch the hands we missed, linger...
for a moment longer then before

we've been put in time out
we ache for release

what comfort will we find
when we do?

Long, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

Long, too long America
By Walt Whitman

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again. 

-- David Whyte

My queerness
is not unlike
a cat on a leash.
It's awkward
people don't always understand why it's happening
or how it works
but it's not hurting anyone
so it goes mostly unbothered.

The difference
is that you can see
a cat
on a leash. 

-- Rachel Wiley, Nothing Is Okay

spread their scent

The gentle deafening quiet
that accompanies that scent is a mix
of birds, breeze, pattering of feet
its a rustle and a swish
so quiet and so loud
I can hear it in the background
when I descent to sleep

It feels like warm sun
in that space between spring and summer
subtle, caressing
like a carpet of soft grasses
a sweater of dandelion fluff
coy and playful, like long hair
blowing in a breeze

I wear its scent so that it stays with me
when I return to life
the forest as my cloak
Decorating myself as a nymph
Feeling it when I close my eyes
when all else is hard, overwhelming
my sense return to the forest
I'm restored. 

My Vow 

there's not enough time in the day
for all the things I want to read
for all the conversations I want to have
for all the things that need to be done

so I vow to stop pouring energy
into those that don't refill
and those that have big words
that disappear when the audience does


The State of Things 

there is no greater pleasure then sliding a clean body
between clean sheets

it feels like possibility


Pleasant Undoing 

all the sadness and frustration,
            the disdain and even the beauty,
rise, push, swell until I feel crushed
            by the weight of the world

then a break, the empathetic
           wave crests,
and the bubble of happiness
            carries me to the surface

it burst in the light of the sun
or by the gentle breeze
             that feels so soft
such a pleasant undoing

my skin is like paper
            that shines bright in the light
but creases and flutters
            lines and line and lines and holes

I pick the doodles that
            cover the outside
the inside full of other peoples
            scribbles
I can't erase them without tearing the paper


The Future 

the future is a dark crystal ball
sometimes as black as the new moon
sometimes swirls of grey
smokey like milk in coffee
always unyielding with her secrets
what I wouldn't give to know what tomorrow held

“𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐝.”

― 𝐍𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐭𝐚 𝐆𝐢𝐥𝐥

"To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.

[...] Mother whispered, "See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking."'

-- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 

"She thanks the sky, and she walks the earth,
Her tears that fall are beautiful.
She says my people, she says my tribe,
all good lovers out there, peace tonight, peace tonight.

To the broken hearted, the burdened too,
To everyone, peace tonight, peace tonight."

-- Elephant Revival, Peace Tonight

Like, okay sugar and booze feel good, then bad Sometimes real bad But art feels bad before it feels even worse

 – Tommy Pico, Junk

How do you sum up a life in 5 words or pages or books or decades of writing for hours a day with no break and endless hemming and hawing about all it was or wasn't or could have, should have, would have, might have, wasn't but who's to say what matters in it all --

Birth and death are the bookmarks ends... but maybe I was right the first time... with divisions of no set length birth and death and years, months, shorter shorter lately maybe, well its not so scientific but it is one divider, however doesn't it all just start to blur together, and how many of you just wanted to burst into song, letting loose all those seconds when you read that first line, just me?

That's okay, I'm used to it. Miles work too anyway, the ones traveled or the ones in between me and family or the metaphorical ones between what I thought it would all be and what it is, between who I am and who he is and who we thought 36 would be and how can 30s feel so old and so young at the same time, when I might as well still be in college and drinking beer that tastes like piss --

Vomiting up sloe gin that looks like blood, studying Chinese characters while standing against the wall at a party (that was the best grade I got on a vocab quiz) knowing that there is no where else I'd rather be but also somehow that it was all pretend, and I can't pretend that wasn't a lifetime ago.

::Breathe::

Sometimes everything rushes by so fast that I can't catch my breath, but it is also endless... did you know that they say there are more suicides in genius youth because they figure out so early that there is no point to life besides just living it, no great reveal, just these days of passing and what is the point, and I think 36 is still too young to know that, but at least here we can see the beauty too --

Thirteen thousand plus sunsets and rises and days and nights, but I don't see sunrises very often because morning sleep is the best sleep but maybe I'm missing out too; but am I because can't travel be written as distance x time = the great big gulping pause --

::Pause::

Its both endlessly frustrating and also so very reassuring that life keeps going even when your checked out, that the pause is really only pretend, and when you let out that little shutter at the end of the gasp and return to your regular pattern, well it all just rushes back --

Talk about a regular pattern, I think marriage is just opening the dishwasher and wanting to throttle someone for it all. being. wrong! but instead just thanking them for doing it, and I swear that if we had a mattress the size of our whole bedroom, and we drew a line down the center, I would still end up smashed against the edge --

I have early memories sitting on the stoop of our house in Allentown, just the moment and nothing else, and remember being in the hospital with dehydration when the spaceship Challenger exploded, and then vividly I flash ahead to the night that my heart sped to 200+ bpm, a lamborghini engine in a VW Bug, and the moment they stopped my heart and I knew so surely how I had years to come --

And how do you sum it all up, with birth and death, and my own death then life, and how much do I have left and what do I want and I guess that it all comes down to this great secret:

When Mary Oliver passed, I remember just how much I loved her writing, which spoke to a deep place in me. The first of her offerings that really pulled my breath away and took me inside to a place of old memory was The Summer Day (of course)...

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Isn't that the first one to draw many of us in? But it took me immediately to summer at my childhood home, it felt warm and safe, but also full of charge for my life ahead.



It was When Death Comes though that brought me back with her passing to the wonder not just of her poetry, but poetry in general.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

This was the one that sent me scurrying to buy, not only one of her books (with the complete intention of marking it and dogearing it with abandon and no remorse), but also more books of poetry and stories of that form in general. But I wanted to be intentional here, I wanted to bring not just voices that felt familiar to my own, but ones that spoke of experiences I never had and cultures that aren't my own.

I ended up with an absolutely inspiring collection of amazing writings. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and Junk by Tommy Pico.




Keep an eye out in the weeks ahead as I share more of my favorites. I hope you find it as inspiring as I do!

Eight is long limbs with knobby knees,